Stupid Mental Blocks! - A Silly Story

It's been a family tradition to go to Yumcha （飲茶） every Sunday and today was no exception. During the past few years I've been studying Mandarin, I always try to use it when I order anything at a Chinese restaurant, but after living in China for 5 months, I pretty much don't bother using Mandarin when ordering food because I'm simply over that stage... Instead，I've been trying to use Cantonese. I can usually pull it off... but today I had a sudden mental block. I was trying to order a plate of spring rolls and just after I called the waitress' attention by saying 唔該 m goi (excuse me), I was preparing my 'mental subtitles' (when I speak Cantonese I tend to have subtitles in my head, because I'm sort of directly translating from Mandarin), and I had the sentence 唔該嚟一碟春巻 m goi lei jat dip tsoengyun . However when it was time to speak, I couldn't remember the pronunciation for 碟 (a small plate), and somehow I said pan instead of dip. I instantly knew I was wrong when I said pan so I quickly scanned my brain for the Mandarin pronunciation (when I know the Mandarin pronunciation I can usually guess the Cantonese one), but unfortunately "file not found." So I just said 一份 jat fan (one order) instead. To top it off, when the waitress confirmed what I said 一份呀 jat fan a？ (so one order?), I panicked and answered in Mandarin saying 對，對！ dui, dui (yes, yes)! The waitress gave me a confused look. LOL Luckily, later on when I ordered some 油炸鬼 yau dza gwai (deep fried bread sticks) and some 豆腐花 dau fu faa （sweet beancurd dessert), she still talked to me in Cantonese. I hate it when people stop speaking to me in a foreign language just because of a simple mistake.

Haha, this is what happens when you become addicted to languages!